Blood Roses (Francesca Lia Block, 2008) [2008-06-07]

The title story didn't do much for me, but the collection does improve.

The inside jacket flap quotes "What shall we do, all of us?  All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, our watermelon hearts?"  This is from the story "Giant" (the second story in the collection), and that line really resonated with me -- made the eponymous transformation in that tale really connect with actual life.

The inside jacket flap proclaims, "What's real is what's imagined in nine tales of transformation by Francesca Lia Block," and I think the different tales have varying degrees of success in pulling off that idea.  I think "Body Art" is the best of the nine, both as a story on its own and as an example of that statement.

Rest and Bread ("Gratitude")

I arrived a few minutes after 6 but was still the first person.  Laura Ruth was so pleased to see me.  "I'm so glad to see you so often.  A week ago I didn't even know you were a person."  (In the Welcome at the beginning of the actual service, she talked a lot about being grateful for everyone who was here and the light that they are/bring.)

Before the service began, Laura Ruth introduced me to Lauren, who was helping to lead service -- purple dress, short almost punky strawberry blonde hair, as the service went on she looked familiar like I'd seen her around, but maybe it was just that she has that familiar Smith-esque look.

Service starts at 6:15, with music playing beginning around 6pm.  One of the ones tonight was violins and then celloes and I thought of you, mjules :)

The order of service was exactly the same as last week.

The Psalm was Psalm 33.  I really liked the phrasing in v.9b: "God commanded and it stood firm."

The Sacred Text was Rumi "The Music We Are"

In the Reflection, Laura Ruth talked about how when she and her partner get in the car, whether to go on a trip or just to go somewhere, they look around at all they have and say something like, "We are the luckiest women in the world.  We are so rich.  Rich beyond our imagining."  (I didn't write it down exactly.)  They learned this ritual from friends of theirs from AA -- a discipline of gratitude.
    She invited us to participate in a ritual of gratitude -- to imagine a post-it note in our mind and to write down each of these as she called them out (she gave us about 15 seconds to think of each one):
(1) the biggest thing you are grateful for (my answer: God's love, abundant grace and forgiveness -- more tangibly, my parents' love, and all that comes with that)
(2) the smallest thing you are grateful for (my answer: the highlights in my hair -- I happened to notice how pretty they looked after I got my hair cut last night, but I really don't think about the color of my hair much)
(3) something in this room you are grateful for (my answer: Laura Ruth)
She then invited people to name any of them aloud, in any order.  I didn't quite feel comfortable voicing any of mine, but so it goes.

She closed with a quotation from Meister Eckhart: If the only prayer we ever said was, "thank you," that would suffice.  As soon as she began saying it, I began mouthing along, because at her party on Saturday, Gusti gave us each a small prayer cloth, and inside (they were rolled up and tied with a colored ribbon -- I took purple, obv.) was a scrap of paper with a note from Gusti on one side (This traveling "prayer cloth" is my thank YOU for supporting me in this time.  I invite you to place your own prayers on the cloth, as the Spirit moves.) and that quotation on the other.

I think it was a smaller group than last week (and mostly different people, too -- though that's irrelevant to this bit), but there were very few Prayers lifted.  I found this so weird 'cause I had like a half a dozen Petitions easily and at least three Gratitudes... but while I don't mind being That Girl who's ticking off Joys and Concerns on her fingers in regular church, I felt awkward making it all about me in such a small group, especially since after each one we sang "God have mercy" or "Thanks be to God" so it didn't feel appropriate to lift up a whole bunch of unrelated prayers all in one go.

At the Passing of the Peace I first turned to the woman directly on my left and shook her hand (I try not to assume that people are comfortable hugging) and as she shook my hand she kind of pulled me in for a hug -- not really hard (and she was tiny) so if I'd resisted I'm sure she would have let go, but obv. I totally went for it, and I then hugged everyone else.

Someone, I think the woman with long dirty blonde hair, complimented me on my necklace and I smiled and said, "It's from Boston Pride last year."  I love my "Ask. Tell." dogtag so much.  It is so me.

After the service, various people introduced themselves to me -- Althea, who was the woman directly on my left (looks somewhat Native American in complexion, long black hair, red shirt), the woman who commented on my necklace but whose name escapes me (very skinny, long dirty blond hair, light blue shirt), Gary who works at the Coop.

Laura Ruth had to go to an SPRC or something meeting, so she didn't stay long, but she asked me if I'd noticed that she'd implemented all the changes I'd suggested last week.  I said yes I had, had been really excited.  (I didn't mention how I had noticed her clearly gleefully looking at me during those bits.)  She asked if I had any other suggestions and I said just a couple and she was all excited to implement them for next week.  I thought of a couple more later (it's really a nice service, my crits are all in terms of making it run smoothly -- the blonde woman was there when Laura Ruth was asking me, so I debriefed her on the end of last week, and she said that this was her first time and it flowed very smoothly and was very easy for a newbie so thank you; I said I was glad I could help "create value" as we would say where I work), but that e-mail is going to have to wait until tomorrow because I am up far later than I should be, given how little sleep I got last night.  (I opted to go home instead of going to the Keshet event because I am lame, but then my brother called me.)

I also told Laura Ruth how the idea of a "discipline of gratitude" reminded me of "joy sadhana" which I explained briefly (5/3/2) and I said I really like the biggest/smallest/in this room exercise.

Heh, if you Google "joy sadhana," the top 10 results include:
(1) the LJ interest (who knew there was a "centralized base camp of gleee"?)
(2) the LJ profile for mylittleredgirl (from whom Ari got the idea)
(4) my joy sadhana LJ tag
(9) Ari's inaugural joy sadhana post
(10 is a blog post from a few months after Ari adopted the practice, but I don't know if the blogger is connected to mylittleredgirl or anyone... though I guess if you wanna be technical, if you trace anything far enough it all eventually gets connected)

mjules: *grins* I always like when you share. [4:52pm]

but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it's getting colder and colder
everytime you lose

so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself

I got my hair cut last night (Salon CU, Christine).  The woman styled it with an out-flip rather than the under-flip I usually do, and yeah, I don't really like that look on me.  Which is good to know.  (I'm really happy with the cut, though.  The layering is all intact, so it's just as pretty as it was before, only now it's not at that awkward length, which makes it even prettier.)

I went to bed around 11 last night.  I kept seeing flashes of light -- heat lightning I supposed.  Around midnight, it got really windy -- I actually took out my window fan for fear it would get blown out of the window.  This was also when the air significantly cooled off.  I was still not falling asleep, though.  Not awake enough to anything terribly productive (I know, this is different from my regular awake times how?), just not actually sleeping.  Hi, 2:30am.  I woke up at 7:37am.  (I aim to be out of my house around 7:15.)  So that's the second day this year that I flat-out did not go to the gym ('cause I already had evening commitments, so I couldn't do it after work).

***

I Y!M chatted with mjules this afternoon, and she is ftw.  (And message to mjules: I did feel better afterward -- apparently I still need to be reminded that talking things out, even when it is just an endless rehash, makes me feel better, and that trying to just will feelings to go away really doesn't work for me like at all ever.)

From our conversation:
me: I always appreciate clarifications, even when they turn out to be redundant.
mjules: I fucking love clarifications.
mjules: Love them so much I'm going to put them in the pre-dating clause I make my next S.O. sign.
mjules: *grins* I'm mostly joking about that, of course, but I'm starting to think it wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm really tired of having relationships not turn out.
[...]
mjules: Once you got to the point that you felt you wanted to try a dating relationship with someone, you could pull out the paperwork, say 'Here, these are things you need to know,' and if they run screaming, you know they aren't prepared to deal with your analytical nature. *laughs*
me: Exactly!
mjules: Maybe we should draw up some drafts.
mjules: ...God, I can see us making spreadsheets.

She began drafting and in response to one of my comments, she said: "*laugh* I like that you appreciate phrasing. That was always my favorite part of your feedback, back when you just read my fic, that you would pick apart sentence structure."

Whee, memory lane!

I ended up reminding her that I'd recced her and she reminded me that when I contacted her to tell her some of her fic links didn't work (she'd locked down her personal journal and reposted fic to a fic journal but had missed a few . . . and I was at the time copying all my recs over onto del.icio.us) she checked out my journal and saw my CWM writeups and suchlike and she was in the midst of making peace with her own queerness and Christian upbringing and yeah, she totally friended me.

[In the spirit of Ari, I tracked down the exact date she friended me -- June 7, 2007.  Which it didn't occur to me until just now that that was barely a year ago.  And we didn't really start becoming close until I was on Y!M all the time this January.]

Anyway, in talking about her fic, mjules mentioned how she's "a hopelessly cynical romantic" and told me about a story idea which reminded me of musesfool's fondness for characters saying "I love you" in ways other than actually saying those exact words.  And so of course what always comes to mind for me is "I wouldn't stop for red lights."  So I tracked down the "17 People" transcript. ( for my own reference more than anything, I guess )